


We Two Kings

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Series: 12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [1]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: 12 Days of Dethmas, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: One trip back to Nathan’s parents’ place for Christmas. That’s all it takes to break Skwisgaar’s long tradition of not bothering to get presents for anyone he’s sleeping with. As soon as they get back, he marches into their manager’s office.
Relationships: Nathan Explosion/Skwisgaar Skwigelf
Series: 12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055183
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	We Two Kings

**Author's Note:**

> **Dec 13 - Your favorite holiday tradition... Dethklok style**
> 
> My mom has these static cling decals in traditional greens and red, and every year I am in charge of using them to decorate the bathroom mirror. At some point ages ago I got bored with doing plain ol’ wreaths all the time. Sometimes I spell out Happy Holidays, sometimes I make green presents with red bows, sometimes it's a garland draped across the mirror, etc. I don't even live there anymore, and she still goes spare if I don't do it.

One trip back to Nathan’s parents’ place for Christmas. That’s all it takes to break Skwisgaar’s long tradition of not bothering to get presents for anyone he’s sleeping with. As soon as they get back, he marches into their manager’s office. 

“You gots to finds this things for me,” he says imperiously, dropping something flat and green on Offdensen’s desk. “Buts in blacks and silvers. Ands with the little red dots whats ams berries.”

Offdensen picks it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger as though he’s concerned it might be some sort of used condom. (He’s only been working for the band a few months now, but it wouldn’t be the first time.) “What, ah, is this exactly?”

“Ams ones of those things for ams puttings on a mirrors.” Skwisgaar fishes around in his back pocket and produces a somewhat bent polaroid, dropping it on the desk next to the green slip of plastic shaped like a cartoon holly leaf. In the picture, two different shades of green leaves make up a Christmas wreath on the mirror, dotted with red berries, all clearly captured by Rose Explosion using an old Sun 660 Autofocus.[1] “Nathans makes this at his parents’ house. Different stuffs every years, never repeats hims-self.”

The photo is given due consideration as well. Offdensen glances up over the edge of his glasses. “And you want to. . . .”

“Wants to haves them for the new house we ams have built,” Skwisgaar confirms. He’s not particularly thinking about why all this feels so important or what that might mean about what was _supposed_ to just be a casual fling. “For next years, whats he can does it at homes, too. Onlies gets more and haves a big fucks-off mirror ins the livings room for thems.”

“I’ll let the contractors know to add it to the plans.”

“Goods.” Skwisgaar starts to leave, but pauses at the door. “And don’t tells no ones. Ams a surprise.”

And the surprise goes pretty well. A few weeks before the next Christmas Skwisgaar takes the almost man-sized box, scrapes the shipping labels off, wraps it (poorly), and leaves it in front of Nathan’s bedroom door. He doesn’t leave a tag saying who it’s from and Nathan never asks, but the guy has to have an idea who it’s from. Who _else_ would know to do this?

A few days later, the living room mirror in the newly christened Mordhaus is decorated with a giant silver skull made out of cartoon holly leaves. It’s layered over the black ones to give the illusions of lines and holes, with a glimmer of red berries sprinkled deep within the eye sockets. Up close it’s crude and a little weird, but from a distance it looks fucking cool. It gives Skwisgaar an unfamiliar warm feeling in his chest to know that he’d helped make that possible. 

The year after that, it’s a crow in flight with a silver fish in its beak, dripping with blood. The year after _that_ , it’s a black and silver present with blood seeping through one corner and a red tag that reads “FROM SATAN.” Between that and the following year’s spider wearing a Santa hat, that’s about as Christmas-y as it ever gets. The rest of the guys think it’s cool but don’t pay enough attention to realize it’s their own bandmate who does it every year. 

Fast forward about a decade. 

It’s well after 4am, early in December. Skwisgaar is lounging on the couch nearest to the mirror, idly playing guitar while Nathan works with his static cling decals and, occasionally, a step stool. Every once in a while the hulking front man paces around the room to examine his work from different angles and distances, scratch his head, and drink absentmindedly from his current beer bottle. It’s the same brand his dad keeps in the fridge back in Florida. (That one isn’t Skwisgaar’s doing, Nathan arranges for that all on his own every year.)

Just like the unacknowledged understanding that Skwisgaar gave him this new tradition to look forward to, there’s an unspoken rule that Skwisgaar doesn’t look until he’s done. Relationships, it turns out, are mostly a matter of paths trodden so deep into you that you follow them without having to think about it, and it feels good. Comfortable, even. 

Eventually Nathan thumps down on the couch next to him. Skwisgaar stops his absentminded fretting to put the guitar to one side and stretch, getting a few satisfying little pops out of his spine. From the looks of it out the windows, dawn isn’t all that long off. “All dones?”

“I think so,” Nathan grumbles. “I can’t get the fucking lines smooth enough, but whatever.”

“I’s shores it am fines, Misters Porflect,” he replies, and accepts the half finished beer that Nathan hands him. Their fingers brush, and Skwisgaar impulsively transfers the beer to his other hand so he can tangle them together. He’s not particularly thinking about what this impulse might mean about what was _supposed_ to just be a casual fling over ten years ago now, but has endured into . . . something else. “Can I sees it now?”

Nathan seems surprisingly ambivalent; usually he demands that Skwisgaar look and give his opinion immediately upon completion, pressing and wringing to try and get constructive criticism even though they both know he doesn’t always take that the best. This time he just shrugs and says, “Sure, I guess you can, if you want,” with so much forced casualness it’s like he slathered it on with a trowel. Puzzled, Skwisgaar stands and tugs for the other man to come with him as he starts to turn—

His jaw drops as soon as he sees what Nathan has spent the last several hours working on with meticulous attention to detail and laser-like focus. 

“That. Ams mine face,” he says wonderingly, dropping Nathan’s hand and drifting in for a closer look. 

Despite the complaint a moment ago, there aren’t really _lines_. The entire piece is roughly as tall as he is and mostly silver overlaid with black, like looking at the negative of a photograph. It’s not particularly detailed, but Nathan has captured the contours of his face in black shapes. Eyes, nose, cheekbones, mouth, jaw . . . even the hollow of his throat, all framed by dark waves of the hair that always hangs down in front of his shoulders. 

Nathan comes up behind him while he stares, taking the beer back before he has a chance to accidentally drop it, and Skwisgaar rocks back on the heels of his boots and leans against him. “I can’ts believes you dids this. . . .”

“Yeah, well.” He can feel Nathan shrug, and the rumbling in his chest when he speaks. “I didn’t want to do a stupid Christmas tree, and I couldn’t think of anything else.” More of that forced casualness. “It’s not really a big deal, I’m gonna do one of us each year for a while so those other assholes can’t bitch too much about being left out. But . . . yeah. I started with you. What do you think, any good?”

“Ja, goods,” Skwisgaar manages against the sudden big gay lump in his throat. 

He’d been facing away from Nathan the whole time he’d been working on this; it was done from _memory_. Nathan has memorized his _face._ And this is a guy who, rather than just imagining he’s singing in armor just to make an album more brutal, actually commissioned a full suit of armor to be made for himself on the grounds that just picturing stuff when you could actually have it was for pussies. 

Fuck. Holiday bullshit hadn’t ever gotten to him before, but he’d made that one, _tiny_ no-gift exception and that had opened the floodgates, hadn’t it? This big lug with his once-a-year art projects has a piece of his heart . . . and now seems to be holding out a piece of his own. 

Skwisgaar turns. It feels like he’s moving in slow motion and his tongue is weighted and heavy with words he has no practice and probably no right to say out loud. So he doesn’t say anything, just winds his long fingers into Nathan’s hair and kisses him like there’s no fucking tomorrow. They’ve been together for so long, that’s all he really needs to do to tell the man _I love you back, I love you too_. 

It’s going to be a brutally amazing Christmas this year.

* * *

1 Just pretend this is Nathan's mom with a polaroid camera, not my mom with a smartphone. Return to text


End file.
